The rise in popularity of computer networks such as the Internet has led software application developers to create complex software applications which interact between computer systems over the network. One example of such a software application is a collaboration system which allows multiple Internet browsers (i.e., users controlling such browsers) referred to as participants to partake in a shared communications session via a collaboration server. The shared communications session, which may be a shared web browsing session for example, is generally called a “collaboration session.” A collaboration session allows multiple participants to interact with a web server or web-enabled application server so that such participants appear to the application server as a single web browser (i.e., a single user).
Generally, the collaboration server serves as a point of contact for the participant browsers and manages the shared collaboration session. When supporting one or more collaboration sessions that include multiple web browser participants, the collaboration server allows at least one participant browser to “drive” or control the shared collaboration session while the other remaining participant browsers are able to receive a copy of any shared content such as web pages just as they appeared to the controlling participant browser. In this manner, the controlling browser can guide other participant browsers through a shared web session without requiring the other users operating the other participant browsers to interact with those browsers. This is only one example of collaboration, of which there may be other forms.
Generally, upon initiation of a collaboration session using conventional collaboration techniques, each participant browser identifies itself to the collaboration server and the collaboration server begins a process of maintaining a tree or list of Uniform Resource Locator (URL) information that describes the current web page structure (e.g., frames, sub-frames, etc.) associated with the shared web session between the participant browsers and the collaboration server. The purpose of maintaining this URL information is so that when other participants join the shared collaboration session, the conventional collaboration server may provide those other participant browsers with the URL information related to the shared collaboration session so those participants can view the current web page structure related to that shared session.